The Opelousas courier., 1887-10-22
A COTTON FIELD.
Cultivating and Harvesting the
Useful Plant.
Seeding, Caring for and Picking
the Cotton.

In Harper's Weekly of August there
was an illustration of a cotton ware
house. Tier on tier are piled the cotton
bales, ready for shipment to all parts of
the world. Mr.. Horace Bradley in this
number presents a cotton field IN full
bloom, with the hands hard at work
picking the snow-white product, and SO
is shown one of the most important OF
all textile substances in its various
stages. The seeding of cotton begins
in March and April, according to the
locality, and at the close of July or be-
ginning of August the real picking sea-
son begins. This year in Georgia the
first bale of cotton was forwarded to At
lanta on the 5th of July. From the lime
the seed first sprouts until the plant is
mature, work is constant. In such
fruitful soil and with a semi-tropical
climate weeds grow apace.
The cotton has to be gone over fire.
quently with the hoe to kill out the
parasitical growths, and to loosen the
soil and give the plant air. Sometimes
| excessive toll is necessary in order to
clear the plant of its greatest enemy, the
cotton worm. There has been many a
cotton field, presenting one day fair re-
turns for the labor expended On 1t,
| which on the morrow has shown but a
wide expanse of sickly-looking yellow
stalks, the caterpillars having stripped
every plant of its leaves. Early blooms
are visible in June, and impatiently do
| the planter and his hands wait until
there are sufficient bolls to begin with.
| The flower of the cotton is very beautl-
full, sometimes of a delicate st~raw-color,
and varying with the sun, being at mid
day of a snowy white, and of evenings
taking a pinky shade. When the flower
falls, at once the boil begins to form,
| and the cotton is mature and ready to
pick when the boil bursts. Cotton
ready to be picked appears on the plant
at the same time with flowers, and both
are continuous until the first frost ap-
pears. In September and October cot
ton-picking is in full blast. All hands
start out early to work, and all provided
with baskets, sometimes with bags. Ex-
pert cotton-pickers work with
| great rapidity, as they are gen
orally paid by the pound. They
carry a bag, which they soon fill, and
lAhen they transfer the cotton to huge
baskets. There is always a wagon in at
tendance, and the contents of the bas-
kets are dumped into the wagon. From
| the field to the storehouse or the gin,
backward and forward, the full wagons
and the empty ones are always in move
ment. 1t is hard, hot work at times, and
under a broiling sun. As celebrity is
everything, sometimes any animal that
can haul is pressed into service, and a
mule and an OK are occasionally attached
to the same wagon. Men and women
seem to enjoy the work, and through the
cotton fields they sing as they pick.
There have been many inventions devised
for the mechanical picking of cotton,
but nothing, so far, has proved as eff
fectual or economical as the hands of the
colored people. While the blooms show
their snowy fleece it is the object of the
| planter to secure all the cotton he can.
Days of rain render picking difficult, as
as the cotton then does not come readily
from the boil, apd V when pulled is
likely to be slightly colored. The high
est grades of the staple, those bringing
the best prices in the market, can only
be picked in fine weather from the per-
fectly dry and mature cotton boil.
To the s~torehouse first, and then
thr8ngh the gin, passes all the cotton.
Before Eli Whitney's time all cotton was
picked by hand, SO as to clean it of its
seed and trash. This lgas very slow and
laborious work, for With certain long,
staple cotton the task of a woman was
not more than n or two pounds of
clean cotton in the eight hours. Eli
Whitney was born in Westborough,
Mass, in 1865. Studying law 10 savan-
nah, he resided in the house of the
widow of General Greene. Observing
pthe time and labor necessary to clean
cotton, he at once set to work to invent
a machine which would accomplish the
task, and the gin was the result. There
has been no invention which has been of
greater benefit to the world in general
than the Whitney gin.-[Harper's
Weekly.
A MetrODOLitQN Match Seller.